


Rejected Grace

by gabrielsingskaraoke



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Minor Character Death, M/M, Season/Series 09, Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielsingskaraoke/pseuds/gabrielsingskaraoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repost, previously under psuedonym lokilith</p><p>Castiel's stolen grace finally starts to run out, and Dean is left trying to keep him alive. Being a Winchester means he always finds a way, damn the costs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rejected Grace

I.

It hurts.

It’s the first thought Castiel has upon waking.

He thinks how pain is supposed to be distant, nothing. Something felt on the periphery. Something he can only observe now, as something happening to the body but not to him. He thinks about how pain was when he was human.

He thinks of the moment before Dean rushed in. How it felt to have your body clench with its soul around the point of a mortal wound. How it felt focused and sharp.

Until it fell into a dull throb and a sense of nothing.

He can feel the sharpness.

But there’s no focus here. It’s like his entire body is rebelling from the inside. It’s like…  
“No.”

He hears the groan at his left before he even opens his eyes.

“Dammit, Cas. Go back to bed.”

I’m in bed. He thinks.

He tries to call out again. He tried to move past the pain. The burning that maps out across his bones. He can feel it burning against his organs, and wonders if this is what it feels like when Sam had explained about “organs shutting down.”

This shouldn’t be happening. This isn’t. I’m an angel. Angels don’t “shut down.”

He can feel his blood pumping still. His thoughts feel… too fast, like they’re buzzing and pounding and pushing against his skull and they won’t stop, they can’t stop, but he just wants them to. slow. down.

Breathe. He thinks, Before you can’t anymore.

The panic is back. The panic never left. The panic is moving everywhere and it won’t stop and his eyes were open but now they’re not and why aren’t they?

“Cas?” He hears it, from above him. Dean’s voice.

“Cas, man, come on. Wake up.” Dean’s voice shouldn’t sound like that. Dean’s voice sounds rough in the morning. It sounds like a brush of his cheek before he shuffles off to shave. It sounds like the yawn when he comes back with coffee and a towel around his waist. It sounds like – “Castiel!”

It shouldn’t sound like the panic working through Castiel’s stolen grace.

“SAM! SAM, HELP!”

 

II.

“It’s been three days, and Dean hasn’t left him.” Sam was pacing, holding the phone against his ear. He wasn’t even sure how it was working. Calling had been a last ditch effort.

“If we wait any longer, the smell might wake him up.” The phone shouldn’t even be charged, realistically, but maybe it was just time for the universe to give them a break.

“Charlie, he needs you. I don’t…” Sam knew his voice was going to break. He knew Charlie didn’t have to hear it.

It’s just what happens. You lose your mom. The love of your life. Your Father. Your real father. You kill your friends just by being near them. He’d already lost two brothers, and only one had come back. What hope could he have that it would work for the third?

“Sam?”

Her voice was too clear for the phone and before he knew it there were arms wrapped around him and red hair pressed against his chin.

“Where’s… Where’s Dorothy?” He choked out, when Charlie had finally let him go.

“Holding down the fort in our Kingdom. Our Kingdom! Can you believe it? Now where’s my favorite handmaiden?”

“Charlie… He’s-“

“I get it, Sam. We’ll fix this.” Sam was trapped in another hug before he could respond.

“You’re Winchesters. You find a way.” She said, pulling away and hitting him on the arm.

It was only after she’d started down the hallway to Dean’s room that he started to follow, without any of her tangible enthusiasm.

We find a way, but at what cost?

 

III.

The cost, as it turns out, is Dean.

“Cas, you wouldn’t want to see me like this. You saved me from this.” He whispers against the fallen angel’s cold skin. Proving that black eyes can still feel the too-human pain of… whatever this is.

He’d snuck into the hospital an hour ago.

Dean remembers, behind the haze of the blackness eating away what he used to be. Charlie had brought Castiel here, weaving a story about her cousin, James Bradbury, before it had all gone to hell.

The doctors had run every test they knew of. That had been two months ago. Now, Castiel’s body just sat here, barely functioning on his own. There were machines and wires and alarms, waiting to go off. Doctor Jones… or Johnson… J-something, had finally admitted there was nothing to be done. This was the waiting game. She hadn’t known how “James” could have held on this long.

“He must be fighting to come back for something,” She’d said, looking past Sam and Charlie. “Someone important enough to hang on for.”

But that was two months ago.

Two months that had turned Dean into something that couldn’t be that person anymore.

Abaddon was dead.

Crowley was dead.

Heaven was still closed, but there were angels. A small group, they’d come to visit Castiel once. Dean had been gone, working his way through the rulers of Hell with the careful strokes that Cas had gripped him tight and raised him away from. Sam had said their group was small. Small but proud. He’d offered aid, because he was Sam. Saving people was too ingrained in him to do anything else. It used to be engrained in Dean too.

They’d turned him down. Sam had smiled when he’d recounted their parting words, “humans have fought the battles of Heaven for too long. They deserve to be more than our pawns. You, Winchesters, deserve more. Castiel would have felt the same.”

This was now.

This was Charlie’s tears when she’d seen Dean’s first shift. He’d lost himself in anger, too young to control the quick slip of black across green. She’d screamed, attacked, and fallen. He’d only been trying to keep her calm until he could explain. I’m still me. I’m still Dean. But he wasn’t. She knew it before he had. She’d been through the door to Oz before he could rip his eyes away from her blood across the floor. Just another soul caught in the Winchester Crossfire.

This was Sam coming home to a blood stained floor and no sign of the brother he’d known forever, or the sister he’d come to love. Dean should have left a note, he knew that. He also knew Sam. The boy who would hunt him down to pull him away from a demon’s grasp, even if the demon was Dean. He couldn’t let that happen, Dean still had work to do. Sam thinking he was dead meant more time, more time to fix… whatever had happened to Cas.

“Castiel, I’m so sorry,” but sorry didn’t stop the slide of his knife across Cas’ throat. It didn’t stop the pulse of blue-white grace whispering through the air, and forcing itself down into his mouth and flooding out whatever was left of Dean.

Sorry didn’t stop anything.

 

IV.

Castiel woke up to an empty room.

He felt tired.

His mind felt foggy.

His words came slow.

“Ungg,” and his room wasn’t empty, he realized. He tried to force himself to care, but he felt so tired.

“No. No no. No.” He heard something that sounded like sobs drifting up from the floor. “It was supposed to work. This was supposed to work. No.”

“Dean?” He tried to force out, but his voice caught itself somewhere in the corners of his lips. As if it hadn’t been used in months. He felt dry, and hungry, and still very tired. He felt human. He felt tired, and if he could just close his eyes a moment longer…

“Cas, oh god. Cas, I’m so sorry.” Dean. Dean was upset.

“Dean.”

The noise stopped.

His vision was filled with freckles and green and tan skin. It was perfect. It was too perfect.

“Am I dead?” He managed to choke out, watching the grin spread across Dean’s face.

“No,” Dean said, the feel of his palm hot and comforting against Castiel’s cheek. “No, man. You’re just waking up.”

“What-“ Cas tried to ask, he had so many things to ask. But his throat felt like fire and his eyes were already drifting closed for sleep.

“It’s okay, Cas. You’re alive. You’re okay. We… we both are. I’ll tell you everything soon.” Castiel was asleep before Dean finished speaking, his mind still caught on Dean’s first comforting words,

You’re just waking up.


End file.
